In March, we marked historic milestones for two of the most important conversations of our time. Like so many other disappointing March days in our part of the world, each of these days was unremarkable. There was snow, it was cold, and there was no sign of spring. The news stories were the fourth and sixth, respectively, in a series of variations on the same topic. Apparently, a repetition of the same story in a new version. So what’s so significant about that?
On March 14, ChatGPT’s successor, GPT-4, was released, adding fuel to the fire of global confusion and mild panic sparked by recent advances in generative AI. 1,000 leading researchers and big tech executives called for a moratorium—a measure that is unlikely to ever be implemented—but one that illustrates the need to take control of the recent acceleration of digitalization in our society. Six days later, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its final major report of this decade. The report was the last of this decade, which science has already defined as the decisive one for whether we, as humanity, will manage to change course.
What do these two very different conversations and challenges have in common?
As Google’s CEO recently noted, these are both collective challenges on a unique scale. No one can solve either climate change or sensible regulation of AI alone or as a single nation. We are dependent on one another in new ways.
Both the climate and AI debates are so steeped in technological hype that it blinds us. They are examples of how difficult it is for our society to establish sensible, research-based frameworks for the use of technology so that it serves the common good.
The debates also make it clear that we are living in a pivotal decade—a defining phase of history.
For many years, changes to our climate and the painstaking experimentation with artificial intelligence seemed to be progressing at an unusually slow pace. It hasn’t even been ten years since the public discourse was dominated by melting ice sheets on distant time horizons. Now it’s floods, wildfires, and dried-up rivers in Europe and the rest of the world. Similarly, chatbots were relatively useless, and the potential utility of artificial intelligence was hotly debated.
Change can seem slow. Until it becomes extremely rapid. There are years when very little of significance seems to happen. And then there are years when everything seems to hang in the balance and history is condensed into eventful months. When a century seems to unfold in a single decade.
Both climate science and the science behind OpenAI’s chatbot have evolved over decades leading up to this particular moment in history. These two dates make it clear that we are now in the very decade in which our choices and actions will have more far-reaching consequences for future generations than in many decades before. If we fail at this moment, the consequences will be incalculable.
As we learned during the global COVID-19 pandemic, a phenomenon can act as a catalyst for unresolved societal problems. This is certainly the case with climate change, which will exacerbate a wide range of society’s other key challenges. More than just a crisis in and of itself, it acts as a catalyst for other societal crises and therefore calls for decision-making processes that can bring “all hands on deck.”
When it comes to the latest generation of artificial intelligence, it is more difficult to determine precisely what the economic, political, human, and cultural consequences will be. It is obvious to all observers that the choice of how we will regulate and use this technology will have a defining impact on our immediate future. In a survey of 700 researchers in the field, approximately half of the respondents estimate that there is a 10% probability that the development of artificial intelligence could have catastrophic consequences for humanity as a whole.
A similar threat assessment also lay behind the aforementioned appeal and its clear message: Press the pause button now, before the consequences become incalculable. The appeal reflects a sense of powerlessness that we, as a society, cannot and should not accept. Our task must be to steer developments in a socially desirable direction and, as far as possible, to anticipate and guard against unintended and undesirable consequences.
Although it is difficult to predict exactly how artificial intelligence will affect our society, that does not mean we cannot take steps to guide its development—opening some paths and closing others. But our ability to respond and our democratic toolkit are falling short.
Despite their vastly different natures, the inherent temporal logic of climate change and artificial intelligence means that our democratic institutions and decision-making processes are under unprecedented pressure. These two phenomena have such far-reaching systemic implications that no sector, social actor, or citizen can afford to look away or set them aside. They drive both opportunities and threats across domains, and thus impart a new sense of creeping complexity to many decision-making horizons.
What will this mean for our labor market?
We have long discussed the impact of automation, artificial intelligence, and digitization on future job opportunities. The next question concerns the significance of decision-support algorithms for areas such as leadership and professional expertise, where the concept of “algorithm-driven leadership” is gaining ground and promises both great potential and new pitfalls. Right now is our opportunity to define how we want to use AI in the workplace, before its applications and underlying logic have fully crystallized. Research has shown that it is possible to implement AI systems in a way that can drive efficiency, innovation, and—not least—job satisfaction, but this won’t happen on its own. It happens by involving the entire production chain in determining how to use it wisely. In other words, we must also have the courage to discuss how we want to use AI. Historians and tech experts don’t mince words: we lost humanity’s first encounter with artificial intelligence, as it was embedded in social media platforms ranging from YouTube to Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. We simply cannot afford to lose this time as well.
The new landscape can be summed up in three key words: uncertainty, risk, and resilience.
The first two are more obvious to most people; the last one requires some explanation.
- Growing uncertainty makes it harder to plan and make decisions
- Since we are in uncharted territory, risk is much harder to measure, and risk management is a much more complex exercise
- Resilience is often understood as the ability to “withstand,” but that is far too reactive a way of looking at it, and we must be careful not to entrench ourselves in the trenches. Resilience should also be understood as the ability to“embrace” andtake advantage of the new opportunities and scope for action that crises and technological advances offer. Just as it should be understood as the ability to shape and create the future we ourselves desire—one that doesn’t just happen to us.
Far-reaching decisions must be made
For many private companies, the response to the increasingly complex pressures from the outside world has been to completely overhaul the decision-making chain for a number of critical production processes. This ensures that decisions are made as close as possible to where value creation is greatest, the hurdles are toughest, or innovation is most important. The question is whether this also applies to many other areas—not least in our democracy?
The ability to turn the decision-making chain upside down—or to work both up and down it—will likely be a critical factor in building resilient and responsive institutions, systems, and local communities. This is because centralization makes local communities in workplaces or neighborhoods more apathetic and erodes a sense of shared responsibility. Participation and decision-making authority increase the capacity for action and strength of local communities. This is seen as a unique advantage when they need to tackle challenges or resolve local conflicts regarding the management and use of new technologies—whether it involves installing solar panels in the neighborhood or using digital tools at school and at work.
Conclusion: Dialogue and democratic decision-making foster a sense of shared responsibility
The new government has a special responsibility to involve others in policy development, precisely because it has the power to make decisions on its own. Inclusion is not just about giving the opposition a say, but about freeing itself and giving citizens and stakeholders shared responsibility and influence over how we should shape the digital transformation of our society and address climate change.
The more complex and intertwined our societal challenges become, the less sense it makes for the solutions to be formulated by just a few decision-makers. Overall, it makes less and less sense to view representative democracy as a system in which politicians are elected solely to make decisions on behalf of others. Of course, that is part of their role, but they need to become better at taking on the role of facilitators of open public debates and decision-making processes, in which decision-making power is delegated to a greater extent to the citizens and stakeholders who are expected to put those decisions into practice.
There is a democratic complacency regarding the expectation that our democracy can survive simply by electing decision-makers every four years. We need to re-train our democratic muscles and strengthen democratic resilience by adopting new ways of working in politics and new democratic tools.
Societal challenges may seem overwhelming, and the need to make quick decisions may feel urgent, but there is a high risk that these decisions will amount to nothing more than empty gestures. We’re under pressure from the feeling that digitalization is running away with us, and the awareness that it’s becoming increasingly urgent to curb climate change (not to mention the decline in biodiversity). There’s no time for roundtable discussions, people say, when crises come flying in droves.
But it is a false dichotomy to pit the ability to find effective solutions against the time needed to think things through. Careful consideration requires time and engagement—especially when the challenges are complex. It makes no sense to expect our decision-makers to pull quick solutions out of thin air. And if they do, the results are often unsustainable or even outright harmful. There is a lack of democratic spaces where different types of knowledge and perspectives can come together and be debated on a level playing field.
As things stand, politicians must make decisions after hearing from a politically aligned think tank one day, an expert the next, and seven different lobbyists the day after that, while the role of the civil service seems increasingly caught in the crossfire between the growing complexity of knowledge and challenges on the one hand, and political service on the other.
That is why we should approach this decisive decade with the realization that we need to strengthen our efforts across the decision-making chains that determine whether we will install solar and wind power in our landscape, adapt our society to planetary boundaries, and regulate artificial intelligence for the benefit of us all.
Ultimately, it is the strength of collective decision-making within our society’s institutions that determines our future—not technology itself.
